Dust in Lens? Does it really matter?

[Eric Patdu]

I was initially thinking of adding this to the thread on "You know your lens is sharp when..." but I thought that this merits a separate thread as this is somewhat informative.

From what is written on this article, I would say that dust in sensor may affect the photo but not so much as dust in lens.

www.lensrentals.com/news/2008.10.30/front-element-scratches

[Romy Ocon]

Hehe..... I've read that link - excellent demo of the fact that lens dust/scratches are not too material to worry about. In fact, the only thing that lens dust/scratch affect is the resale value of the lens. Heck, you can tape a 1 peso coin on the front element of a birding lens (say 400 mm or longer), and it will still take good photos, albeit with a slightly lower contrast. For the curious who want to test this and are worried about taping anything to their front glass, you can try shooting with a finger blocking the front of the lens.

[Teddy Regpala]

Hehehe, I've seen that article too.
Moreover, dust or scratches on the rear element (if any), will have more effect than dust or scratches on the front element.

[ppaaoolloo]

All the same you bought precision optics so may as well keep it that way and have it cleaned.

[Jun Gregorio]

Funny thing being a newbie:

A few months ago. I noticed that some of my shots are showing more and more specks. Even more noticebly when in very small opening f22.

No matter how much cleaning I do. my glass it still showed a lot of "dust".

Then one day .... Ay Tanga!!!!

I realized that I turned off my sensor cleaning because I wanted to see the diff between frequent cleaning and cleaning on demand. Due to a lot of distraction personall/business I neglected to turn it back on.

After manually cleaning the sensor AND turning the sensor cleaning back to power-up. The "dust" magically disappeared.

If I can't laugh at myself ......
Besides I just blame it on old-timers desease ;D